Tighten your seatbelts! Making my first attempt at a reverse flow smoker!!!

I would imagine that thing should cook good then.....what I was thinking with the wood, if it gets cold in your area and thats an issue (as like DoodleQ said was his), and you have the room to do it. was to frame around it with 2x4 and 3/4 plywood and make it look like a little smokehouse or something. Just leave the area for fire door and cook chamber openings exposed. Like this, but smaller[img]http://www.corollalighthouse.com/images/smokehouse.jpg[/img]

i really like the idea! i think i will wait about that and see if i decide to do alot of smoking in the colder months or if there is even much call for it. it usually gets in the upper teens to the lower 20s here where i live in the coldest months, and that is the lows. for example, we will see temps in the 70s for highs this weekend. i wish i had it done already, i would smoke a butt this weekend...oh well, guess i gotta wait

The dollies were simply a cut up furniture dolly. I'd REALLY recommend beefing up the structure and not counting on the cast iron hardware. I actually stopped in at Vogelzang...they're only a half hour from me. If I recall, there were two kits I needed. You may want to call rather than buying on line...they're aware of what you need with a smoker vs. a fireplace.
By having a full half barrel as a lid and using an inside frame, sealing is easy as the highest points are intrinsically airtight.
I simply built fires in the bisected halves to burn them out and moved the fire around for a while. For the bottom, I just built a fire in it without the firebrick in it and before I installed the top. The outside paint just burned off as I moved the fire around. Like Ribwizard said, it's just thin metal. Then wire brushing will be cake.

The dollies were simply a cut up furniture dolly. I'd REALLY recommend beefing up the structure and not counting on the cast iron hardware. I actually stopped in at Vogelzang...they're only a half hour from me. If I recall, there were two kits I needed. You may want to call rather than buying on line...they're aware of what you need with a smoker vs. a fireplace.
By having a full half barrel as a lid and using an inside frame, sealing is easy as the highest points are intrinsically airtight.
I simply built fires in the bisected halves to burn them out and moved the fire around for a while. For the bottom, I just built a fire in it without the firebrick in it and before I installed the top. The outside paint just burned off as I moved the fire around. Like Ribwizard said, it's just thin metal. Then wire brushing will be cake.

Hope that helps!

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Thank you so much. I do see the exhaust now. I like the setup of yours and if it weren't so. Far away from me, I would buy yours lol but the shipping would. Be a cow. I just got thru visiting the dawg! He has built a rf smoker from a 150 gallon water tank from a concrete truck. And I must say that its a mighty fine build! Before I left his house, I told him that he should post more of the pics to show everyone the problems he encountered and show more detail. Erin, ur one of the only ppl I know who I could hand a turd to and it would turn into gold b4 u switched hands with it! Lol. Hope to see ya saturday dawg!

if it works, here is a modified version of a big baby drawing that i made a couple of changes to so yall can see what i have in my mind lol on the end where the firebox door is, i think i may put a burner such as the one below. This is a vogelzang bk25 hotplate kit for the double barrel stove. i thought i might use this to cook my sauce before i smoke it....might cook french fries if i can get it hot enough lol

ok here is one more that i did in microsoft paint. the drawing on the last post that i made was from the internet, i just imported it to paint, edited it and then attached it on here. yall tell me what u think....not to scale though

On the bottom tank, ...in my opinion...you should not need the entire length of the drum for a firebox, Id divide it in half and install some expanded metal to keep the logs and coals from pushing so far back into it.

And to be honest, I dont really think you need the reverse flow plate in the top drum, ...if you placed the two drums closer together, and moved the stack to the other end, its already really is a reverse flow like that.....am I wrong?

What if you took some 12 to 14 guage sheet metal and "skirted" the two drums together? You could run a 3/4 pipe burned in the gap between them and be able to run it on propane when you wanted to. But here I go, redesigning the wheel again!!!!

i dont want no smoker with a skirt! thats girly! lol just kidding. i like the ideas rib wizard and the skirt i think might help with recovery times, on the subject of the exhaust and what i call a rf plate etc, i read a post by alblancher and this is quoted word for word from his post:

In a reverse flow cooker the heat enters beneath a heavy metal plate installed horizontally. The heat and smoke are trapped under this plate until it reaches the far end of the cooker where it then rises and travels back down toward the firebox end and exits the chamber. It makes the horizontal trip twice.

As the heat travels under this plate the plate heats and redistributes the heat more evenly throughout the smoker. The smoke travels the length of the food on its way back to the exit stack.

Another advantage to a well built reverse flow is all the additional steel acts as heat sink, helping with recovery times and reducing temperature spikes.

this is why i thought i needed to move the exhaust to the other side and put a baffle in the cc. i could be terribly mistaken because im new to the whole reverse flow method and still trying to figure it out....let me know what yall think

I was just thinking that the bottom of the top tank and the top of the bottom tank would act just like a reverse flow plate would in a traditional reverse flow.

The design like in the picture below , I think may loose a lot of heat escaping from so much surface area of the drum exposed to the outside temperature. But putting a skirt on it would help out a great deal with that. I think it would be a cool build. I read earlier where the one guy had problems with the doors behaving, but when you get to that point, it will be an easy fix and we can walk you through that.

i see what ur saying now ribwizzard. and please dont think im questioning your knowledge. my thoughts behind the baffle were that i was scared that i would have a large temp variance between where the flue comes up from the bottom barrel to the top barrel and the far right side where there is no heat.....i think what u are saying is that the bottom barrel might get hot enough where the distance between the top and bottom barrels work something like a heat sync? once again, im not doubting your knowledge, i just wanna make sure that i make the best smoker i can make with what i have to work with. thanks for all your info!!!! oh, and the door, deciding to go with one. i plan on using maybe some ultra high heat gasket maker such as permatex. i have heard of alot of people doing that.

Well, I'll tell you right now, I have never built one of these.but Ive built a ton ( probably several tons) of other style smokers, And like I said, Ive always been interested in these becouse Ive seen so many being used at road side BBQ joints and they appear to work well for those guys.

Just go on-line and research double barrel smoker and your going to see a bunch of info and builds on these. some with twin flue and some with twin stacks, some off set. See what kind of performance and problems they have. The good thing is , these barrels are a dime a dozen and if you want to rebuild it differently, just take your hardware off and start another one.

Ive used both permatex and rutland, I like the rutland becouse its black instead of red. But both work really well.

Ok I have finally secured my barrels for my smoker. I have a question for yall. Should I take another barrel and cut it out larger than the opening for the door and frame it with angle iron or something like that or should I use the piece originally cut for the door and use some thin flat steel to frame the door?

Regarding the third barrel...I had the same plan but realized the chines (word for raised ridges) did not line up on any of the barrels I had. If yours do match, that should work well and give you somewhere to place a seal. I built an internal frame as an alternative, which is markedly stouter, and gave me a place to mount the grate as well.

Thanks for the info. I would like to see pics of yours if you wouldn't mind postin them. I haven't started mine yet. Got the barrels, just been trying to get the honey do list done. Lol. I'm curious to know, how much cooking surface do u have? And did you make one cooking surface or two? Would love to hear yours and any other ideas from members on here. My buddy, the dawg just told me where I can get 250 gallon propane tanks. I think once I get the big baby done, I'm gonna try to make a big smoker out of those. May save that for the winter months.

if thiese pics oladed correctly, these are the ideas that i have contemplated using to remove the paint from the barrels. what do yall think? the first pic is a flap wheel and the other is twisted wire wheels.

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The wire wheels work good like ribwizzard said, but I find these remove the paint much faster then the wire wheels. It is an abrasive but it doesn't harm the metal its hard enough to remove paint but will wear itself down before it removes any metal even if you linger in one spot. The polycarbide abrasive wheels are designed specifically to remove paint it works well in the angle grinder and they are only $5 a piece instead of almost $20 for a good wire wheel .